The semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) industry has experienced rapid growth. Technological advances in IC materials and design have produced generations of ICs where each generation has smaller and more complex circuits than the previous generation. However, these advances have increased the complexity of processing and manufacturing ICs and, for these advances to be realized, similar developments in IC processing and manufacturing are needed. In the course of integrated circuit evolution, functional density (i.e., the number of interconnected devices per chip area) has generally increased while geometry size (i.e., the smallest component (or line) that can be created using a fabrication process) has decreased.
As the semiconductor device sizes continue to shrink, for example below 20 nanometer (nm) nodes, traditional lithography technologies have optical restrictions, which leads to resolution issues and may not achieve the desired lithography performance. In comparison, extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography can achieve much smaller device sizes. However, EUV lithography still has some shortcomings related to outgassing from photoresist, which may contaminate lithography tools and degrade lithography performance.
Therefore, while existing photoresist materials have been generally adequate for their intended purposes, they have not been entirely satisfactory in every aspect.